Gooding, David: 9 - On the Road with Jesus

Our blessed Lord is not only the bread of life, says he, I am the living bread. And secondly, the manna was just a bit of stuff. The New Testament living bread is the person of Jesus Christ himself. Oh, my Christian brother, my Christian sister, is it true that as you sit there twixt your birth and the eventual heaven, on your way to glory, the living Christ is in you, and you in him, and you'll never be lost, will you? And I recur to this sign. I was getting time, I was beginning to be fanciful, still say, we're getting near tea time. Uh, uh, just say. So I recur to the sign. You know, when our Lord had multiplied the loaves and the fishes, uh-huh, and they'd eaten all as much as they possibly could. He said to the apostles, now gather up the fragments of the bread that remains. That nothing be lost. You say, why on earth did he tell them? Was it that he was of the Green Party and didn't like to leave a mess around about the place? You shouldn't destroy a park if you have a picnic in it. Or was it, uh, that, well, this bread had been the subject of a miracle, and it was a kind of a sacred thing, so what was left mustn't be just ground into the ground, trodden into the ground, it must, uh, be collected. It doesn't say what they did with it, does it? He says, do it so that none of it be lost. Well, come to what conclusions you may about that. I want to tell you a more marvelous thing than that. Sir, if you are a believer, madam, if the living bread of God is in you, that bread will never be lost. It is the wonder of salvation. Christ in me, and I in Christ, and inseparable, and forever. And this little bit of clay, within it, the very bread of God, the Son of God, in me, and I in him, and it will never be lost. Two other objections. When the, when the disciples heard this, some of them said it is a hard saying. Who can hear it about having to have Christ in you? Of course, many people say the same today. I needn't repeat it. They admire the social Christ, the political Christ, but when it comes to spiritual union with Christ, they tend to dismiss it as either fantastic or nonsense or, or irrational or something, and they have no time for it. That is no new attitude. When our Lord began to preach this, some of his hitherto disciples said, this is a hard saying. Who can hear it? And instead of softening his statement, our Lord said, what then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where he was before? What would you say then? And we need to grasp it. This is salvation. Not just making us better men and women here on earth and more socially minded. Just as Jesus Christ came out from that other world into ours, he has ascended back from this world into that world. He came not just to give us an example how we should live here. He came to take us on that selfsame journey from this world to the next. He is the means to maintain us. He has gone back into that spiritual world. And the ca- the the task of salvation is to bring us there too. Therefore, his word becomes the medium. The words I speak unto you, they are spirit, they are life. Oh, it is possible to have a wrong idea of scripture, isn't it? A wrong attitude to scripture. Chapter five has said that. Just to study it academically, just to build up systems of theology, that's not enough. But never let us go to the other extreme. When Christ takes his word and livingly speaks it to our hearts. It is spirit. It is life. Oh, never let any one of us say, oh, that's just words. This is the very mechanism, if I may put it crudely, by which he creates and maintains the spiritual life of his people and prepares us for the great spiritual world ahead. When at creation God spoke his word, the whole universe came into being, and when Christ takes his word and speaks it to our hearts, it gives life, it builds life, it joins us all the more securely to that eternal spiritual realm. So they went back, and our Lord's comment, well, he said, he knew beforehand that though some of them were his disciples, they weren't believers, and that's why they found it a hard saying, I may say. They weren't believers. Humble believers find it quite an easy saying. Unbelievers find it a difficult saying. And Christ knew from the start who they were that should be, uh, had believed and who they were that hadn't believed. And then Christ adds, that's why I said earlier, no one can come to me unless it's given him of the Father. You see, it is the fact. You may get church members, wise, intelligent, with a vast technical knowledge of the Word of God. That isn't the same thing as being a believer. Mere intellectual examination of God's Word will not bring us salvation. In the end, intellectual examination will find such hard sayings as it possibly cannot make sense of, and its attitude will be, well, we can't take it literally, as one famous theologian said, you'll see. Alas for our Lord, when he talked of what happens after death. Well, he was living in the pre-scientific age, you'll see, and they thought that heaven was up there, earth in the middle, and hell was a little bit below Australia. And of course, we are, we are scientific people, and we can't believe that kind of nonsense nowadays, and unfortunately our Lord really didn't know what he was talking about, so we must take his, uh, miracles and things and demythologize them to come at their truth. That's unregenerate intellect trying by its own effort to be a Christian disciple, and it cannot be done, says Christ. No one can come to me unless it be given him of my Father. Yes, the Father is prepared to give it you, but he'll give it to you on his terms. That we come as sinners like the rest of men, in humble repentance, and cast ourselves altogether and entirely on the mercies of God and receive his son. And to make his point, our Lord now pointed out to his apostles that even one of them wasn't a believer. Indeed, you can hold high office in the church by Christ's own choice. I chose Judas, says he, to be an apostle, but he wasn't a believer. He was, in fact, a devil. And it wraps home to our hearts very solemnly, doesn't it? That if we're going to understand and come to Christ and believe on him, we are dependent upon the Father to teach us, and to give us, and to show us, and to lead us. That all that are taught of God come to Christ. And those that come, he will not cast out. So he said to his other apostles, will you also go away? And they said, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that thou art the Holy One of God. And we've all said it. I trust all of us here tonight have said it. I leave you for this session by going back to the signs. Just let me run over that second sign again. You see, the sequence in history was this, that our Lord came down out of heaven. Yes, he did his miracles. He multiplied the loaves and fishes, and many Jews there were that would have made him king as a political Messiah, and he wouldn't have it. And because he wouldn't have it, he was in fact, uh, crucified. But there's another way of looking at it. He went up the mountain then. That is, he ascended into glory. And he's already in, at the right hand of the Father. But we, his people, aren't in glory yet. I don't know about you, but I'm not. No? I- we're not in glory yet, are we? Uh, we're, uh, taking our journey. Yes, and that was a very vivid sign, wasn't it? They were going across the sea. And at the beginning, perhaps it was calm, but after a while, the wind blew and the sea rose, and it was difficult. You see, when the Lord sent them across the sea, how would you get across the sea? You have to use means, don't you? You have to have a boat if you're human and not a fish, and then you have to have oars to row. Ooh, wow, heavy work. And they were rowing to get across the sea and to make progress in their journey, you'll see, and they weren't getting very far and more backwards than forwards. When presently Jesus came to them down off his mountain, and they saw him walking on the sea. Didn't he have to have a boat? And didn't he have to row? No, he didn't. He needed no means. You grasp the point from chapter five? He came from the great spirit world beyond into our world. He is God's incarnate Son. He chooses to cross the sea, he needs no boat, no oars. And he's risen and ascended back into the very presence of God, and his journey is complete. The apostles did need a boat, and they need oars, and so do we, I fancy, don't we? On our journey. What ho? If we're going to make progress, you say, no, I don't, Mr. Preacher, you just believe. Uh, you just shut your eyes and open them, and you're in heaven. No, you're not. If you would make progress in the Christian life, my good friend, you'll have to use the God-appointed means. You'll have to use the old boat, and you'll have to row hard. You will indeed. Ha ha. You say, what are the means that get me nearer to God? Well, there's his word to start with. There's baptism. There's the Lord's Supper. There is prayer. There is witness. The means of grace, as they used to be called in ancient times. And God, who has given us the means of grace, intends us to use them. We're not going to get to heaven by magic. We don't advance on the road by just sitting still. We have to work at it. We have to row. You say, why does he make us row? And why doesn't he stop the wind in the way? Why does he make us row? It's good for the muscles. Develops the character, doesn't it? It's part of the process. We are to use the means of grace to get us ever nearer God and ever nearer home. And he leads us to row, sometimes for many hours on end. Oh, but when I said that, there's another side of the story. When the going was really tough, and they seemed to be getting nowhere fast, they saw Jesus coming. He needed no boat nor oars either. But they gladly received him into the boat, and I tell you what, no sooner had he got into the boat than the boat was there! Instantaneously at the harbor. Do you know what that means? I wonder, surely you've had the experience, when in middle life maybe, often tends to happen there, when the progress seems to have slowed down compared with what it was in your teenage, and you tended to get a little cynical, and now instead of being so far advanced, you feel perhaps this last month or two you've been slipping back a bit, and the difficulties have been intense. Has it never happened, my brother, my sister, that as you've rowed, the Lord has come to you, not visibly as he did to them, but you have sensed this is the Lord, and he speaks, and you know him, and in that moment you bid him again, or you did it years ago, but you bid him, Lord, into my boat, Lord. And you have that sense, overwhelming sense, that the Lord is not only with you, but in you, and in that split second, you feel you are as good as home already. And the words of Paul in Romans eight come perhaps to your mind. Whom he called, them he justified, and whom he justified, them he glorified. You say I am as good as home already. Yes, you see, he is the means of life and will maintain us to the very end. So the Lord bless his word. We started late, we've ended even. Never fear, you'll get your regulation twenty minutes for your coffee, and then we shall need only to spend a half an hour after that for our second session.